Making Sense of the Current Expansion of the U.S. Economy: A Long Wave Approach and a Critique

Abstract

Despite the impressive rebounding of the U.S. economy from the long contraction of the 1970s, a number of radical political economists seem to be dismissive, oblivious, or in denial of this significant turnaround. To the extent that they reluctantly acknowledge the recovery, they immediately add that the recovery represents no long-wave expansion, and that it merely represents a transitory" upswing along the long downswing of the 1970s (Brenner 1998, Moseley 1999, O'Hara 2000, as well as most of the proponents of the SSA thesis). What do we make of the glaring gap between the reality of the current expansion of the U.S. economy and the perceptions of these economists of that expansion? Our search for answer(s) to this question leads us to the conclusion that these radical economists are gravely misreading the expansion; that such misreading stems, among other reasons, from serious theoretical and methodological weaknesses; and that significant policy and/or political implications can follow from such dubious assessments and judgments.